“THAT’S TWO down,” Brian said. “Now what?”
The screaming had abated, but not by much. But the gunfire was still there, and it had changed character . . .
ABDULLAH blessed fate for putting the suppressor on his weapon. His shooting was more accurate than he’d ever hoped.
He was in the Sam Goody music store, which was filled with students. It was also a store with no rear exit, because it was so close to the westernmost entrance. Abdullah’s face was grinning broadly as he walked into the store, firing as he went. The faces he saw were full of disbelief—and for an amused moment he told himself that disbelief was the reason he was killing them. He emptied his first magazine quickly, and indeed the suppressor allowed him to hit with half his shots. Men and women—boys and girls—screamed, stood still and staring for a few precious, deadly seconds, and then started running away. But at less than ten meters, it was just as easy to hit them in the back, and they really had nowhere to run. He just stood there, hosing the room, letting the targets select themselves. Some ran up the other side of the CD racks, trying to escape out the main door. These he shot as they passed, hardly two meters away. In seconds, he’d emptied his first magazine pair, and dumped it, pulling another from his pants pocket and slamming it home and cocking the bolt. But there was a mirror on the store’s back wall, and in it he saw—
“JESUS, another one!” Dominic said.
“Okay.” Brian darted to the other side of the entrance and took position against the wall, bringing his Beretta up. This put him on the same pseudo-corridor as the terrorist, but the setup didn’t benefit a right-handed shooter worth a damn. He had to choose between shooting weak-hand—something he didn’t practice as much as he should have done—or exposing his body to return fire. But something in his Marine mind just said Fuck it and he stepped to his left, pistol up in both hands.
Abdullah saw him and smiled, bringing his weapon to his shoulder—or trying to.
Aldo fired off two aimed shots into the target’s chest, saw no effect, and then emptied his magazine. More than twelve rounds entered the man’s body—
—ABDULLAH FELT them all, and he felt his body jerk with each impact. He tried firing his own weapon, but he missed with all of his shots, and then his body was no longer under his control. He fell forward, trying to recover his balance.
BRIAN EJECTED his empty magazine and pulled the other one from his fanny pack, slapping it in and dropping the slide-release lever. He was going on autopilot now. The bastard was still moving! Time to fix that. He walked over to the prone body, kicked the gun aside, and fired one round right into the back of his head. The skull split open—blood and brains exploded out onto the floor.
“JESUS, ALDO!” Dominic said, coming to his brother’s side. “Fuck that! We got at least one more out there. I’m down to one clip, Enzo.”
“Me, too, bro.”
Amazingly, most of the people on the floor, including the shot ones, were still alive. The blood on the floor could have been rain in a thunderstorm. But both brothers were too wired to be sickened by what they saw. They moved back out into the mall and headed east.
The carnage was just as bad here. The floor was defiled by numerous pools of blood. There were screams and whimpers. Brian passed a little girl, perhaps three years old, standing over the body of her mother, her arms fluttering like a baby bird’s. No time, no damned time to do anything about it. He wished Pete Randall were close. He was a good corpsman. But even Petty Officer Randall would be overwhelmed by this mess.
There was still more chatter from a suppressed sub-machine gun. It was in the Belk’s women’s store, off to their left. Not all that far off by the sound of it. The sound of automatic-weapons fire is distinctive. Nothing else sounds quite the same. They split up, each taking one side of the short corridor leading past the Coffee Beanery and Bostonian Shoes into the next combat area.
The first floor of Belk’s started off with perfumes and makeup. As before, they ran to the sound of the guns. There were six women down at perfume, and three more in makeup. Some were obviously dead. Others were just as obviously alive. Some called out for help, but there was no time for that. The twins split up again. The noise had just stopped. It had been off to their left front, but it wasn’t there now. Had the terrorist run away? Was he just out of ammo?
There were expended cartridge cases all over the floor—nine-millimeter brass, they both saw. He’d had himself a good old time here, Dominic saw. The mirrors affixed to the building’s internal pillars were nearly all shattered by gunfire. To his trained eye, it seemed as though the terrorist had walked in the front, sprayed the first people he’d seen—all women—and then worked his way back and to the left, probably going to wherever he saw the most potential targets. Probably just one guy, Brian’s mind told him.
Okay, what are we up against? Dominic wondered. How’s he going to react? How does he think?
For Brian it was simpler: Where are you, you motherfucker? For the Marine, he was an armed enemy, and nothing else. Not a person, not a human being, not even a thinking brain, just a target holding a weapon.
ZUHAYR EXPERIENCED a sudden diminution of excitement. He’d been more excited than at any moment in his life. He’d had only a few women in his life, and surely he’d killed more women here today than he’d ever fucked . . . but to him, here and now, somehow it felt just the same.
And all that struck him as very satisfying. He hadn’t heard the shooting from before, none of it. He’d scarcely heard his own gunfire, so focused was he on his business. And good business it had been. The look on their faces when they saw him and his machine gun . . . and the look when the bullets struck . . . that was a pleasing sight. But he was down to his last two magazine pairs now. One was in his gun, and the other in his pocket.
Strange, he thought, that he could hear the relative silence now. There were no live women in his immediate area. Well . . . no unwounded women Some of those he’d shot were making noise. Some were even trying to crawl away . . .
He couldn’t have that, Zuhayr knew. He started walking toward one of them, a dark-haired woman wearing whorish red pants.
BRIAN WHISTLED to his brother and pointed. There he was, about five-eight, wearing khaki pants and a similarly colored bush jacket, fifty yards away. A playground shot for a rifle, something for a boot at Parris Island to do, but not quite so easy for his Beretta, however good a marksman he was.
Dominic nodded and started heading that way, but swiveling his head in all directions.
“TOO BAD, woman,” Zuhayr said in English. “But do not be afraid, I send you to see Allah. You will serve me in Paradise.” And he tried to fire a single round into her back. But the Ingram doesn’t allow that easily. Instead he rippled off three rounds from a range of one meter.
BRIAN SAW the whole thing, and something just came loose. The Marine stood up and aimed with both hands. “You motberfucker!” he screamed, and fired as rapidly as accuracy allowed, from a range of perhaps a hundred feet. He fired a total of fourteen shots, almost emptying his weapon. And some of them, remarkably, hit the target.
Three, in fact, one of which got the target right in the belly, and another in center chest.
THE FIRST one hurt. Zuhayr felt the impact as he might have felt a kick in the testicles. It caused his arms to drop as though to cover up and protect from another injury. His weapon was still in his hands, and he fought through the pain to bring it back up as he watched the man approach.
BRIAN DIDN’T forget everything. In fact, a lot came flooding back into his consciousness. He had to remember the lessons of Quantico—and Afghanistan—if he wanted to sleep in his own bed that night. And so he took an indirect path forward, dodging around the rectangular goods tables, keeping his eyes on his target and trusting Enzo to look around. But he did that, too. His target didn’t have command of his weapon. He was looking straight at the Marine, his face strangely fearful . . . but smiling? What the hell?